Wednesday

Author and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips describes the two parallel lives we all seem to lead—the one we’re actually living and the one we want to be living—and how we can reconcile the two. Historian Taylor Branch talks about the heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. Soprano Dawn Upshaw and musician and composer Maria Schneider talk about their new album, “Winter Morning Walks.”

On today’s show, Katherine Bouton talks about hearing loss—which affects 50 million Americans. Alison Singh Gee tells the story of moving into a crumbling Indian palace. And Joan Rivers discusses her television and comedy work and her place as a biting fashion critic.

In This Episode: We take a look at the internet phenomenon of GIFs and how they relate to music. Chadwick Matlin, senior editor for Reuters Opinion and Joshua Carrafa, creator of the “Music History in Gifs” Tumblr, explain the popularity of these animated image files that endlessly repeat.

Plus: Country couple Bruce Robison and Kelly Willis recently united for an album called Cheater’s Game. The duo plays live with their band.

And: He’s best known for writing landmark biographies of presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, but Edmund Morris’ latest book, called This Living Hand, features quite a bit of writing on music. He stops by for a discussion about Beethoven and more.

For this New Sounds, we'll take a listen to the symphonic suite by Ben Frost and Daníel Bjarnason, "Solaris." The international Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative's music protégé for 2010-2011, Frost, (mentored by none other than Brian Eno) joins us in the studio to present the reimagined soundtrack for the 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky film.